Because of a friend's comment, I was reminded of Dr. Pauline A. Chen's book, "Final Exam". I realize that many people take school exams that are referred to as final exams but aren't all that final. Chen's book is about the education of a physician and the included dissection of a human body. I just finished reading it aloud last night despite the fact that I have had the book in my Kindle collection since 2008. Since I have several thousand Kindle books, I am used to forgetting I have a particular one and being reminded by the announcement that Amazon shows me when I look that book up.
I recently got a new Kindle reader. One of my readers is fairly old and the other one is a refurbished version. Both can be slow and seem unsteady at times so the recent Prime day sale seemed a good time to get a new strong reader. To load some good books to read or re-read, I used the web site and my computer to send books I am interested in to load up the new reader. My oldest Kindle book, also purchased in 2008, the year I started using ebooks, is "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. Like "Final Exam", it is about death and dying. Professor Pausch says that older professors are often asked to give a "last lecture" about retiring and/or facing their own deaths.
Quite a few of my friends, all males, have died in the past five or so years. I am interested in ideas and stances that encourage acceptance of death as a natural event even though I don't yet have any reason to think my death will be "soon", whatever that may mean. Dr. Chen participated in dissecting human bodies as part of medical education. Prof. Pausch knew that his liver was failing and that death would be soon. Both books are beautifully written so if you get interested in dying, losing a loved one or considerations of death, you might want to take a look at them.
